French Braids
by prplemyth
Summary: Annabeth and Rachel decide they will become more girly, beginning with Rachel teaching Annabeth to French braid hair. Disaster ensues. Oneshot. Friendship fic.


_A/N: I'm having all the Rachel and all the Annabeth feelings today, and in my head they are best friends. BEST FRIENDS. YOU CAN'T MAKE ME THINK OTHERWISE. Anyway, I had a lot of fun writing this, because I feel like there isn't much friendship fic in the Percy Jackson fandom. Also I enjoy writing fanfic when I should be working on one of my many WIP novels that lack inspiration…It's a problem._

_Also, Rachel's and Annabeth's views are not strictly my own. Just leaving this here._

_Anyway, read, review, but I hope you all enjoy!_

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><p>"We need to teach you how to be a girl," exclaimed Rachel, throwing down her novel. "Actually, we both need to learn how to be girls."<p>

I looked up from my book on constellations. "Excuse me, I must have hallucinated. What?"

"Girl. You're going to become a girl. I'm going to become a girl. Girls. Female. Femininity. That crap."

"I'm pretty sure the boobs did that," I deadpanned, picking the book up again, reading diligently about what the scientists called a new set of stars in the shape of a young girl.

"Well I mean, stereotypically girly. You are a girl, but I am going to teach you how to French braid and enjoy romance novels and how to pick out clothing that is flattering. And I'm going to teach myself how to flirt and be cute."

"You already do that and you're not allowed to."

Rachel didn't meet my eyes. "That I can neither confirm nor deny."

"In short you want someone to do your hair, chat about books with, and shop with."

Rachel shrugged, leaning her chin on my shoulder. "You know me so well."

Laughing, I shoved her red head off of my shoulder and grabbed my bookmark, holding my place. "You know what?" I began, setting the book down. "Fine. Let's start with hair. That could be useful eventually with getting my hair out of my eyes. Besides, I have had disastrous effects with my own regular braids. So sure, Rachel. Teach me how to French braid."

"Teach me, teach me how to French braid."

I stared at Rachel. "Yeah, that's what I just said."

"No, no, see, it's a song. Teach me how to Dougie?"

"And Dougie is…?"

Rachel sighed. "Oh dear Zeus this is going to be far more difficult than I expected." Rachel stood up and pulled my hair out of my ponytail. "Oof," she said. I could nearly hear her frowning. "Can you tell me where your hair brush is? You've got some tangles."

"Over next to the mirror. And of course I have tangles in my hair. I fight monsters for a living," I pretended to glare at her as she walked away.

"You could spend some time to brush it," she called out in a singsong voice.

"Oh, of course," I said, rolling my eyes and sitting backwards on the chair. "I'll be sure to ask the minotaur the next time I come across him that I need some time to primp before kicking his ass."

Rachel returned shaking her head. "You'll do no such thing, Miss Annabeth. The minotaur is Percy's charge, not yours."

I snorted. "Yes, I suppose you're right. Now braid my hair, Rachel, show me how it's done."

"Actually, no, you've got some serious tangles in this head of yours and I need to brush them out before you start getting accidental dreadlocks. I mean honestly, Annabeth, have you showered lately? It can't have been easy to do with so many knots." She paused, and I felt her mess with my hair a little bit. "I'd consider it a personal victory, actually."

I blushed. "Of course I have!" I exclaimed. "Last night! And you of all people should know that curly hair is not conducive to being not tangled. This is not my fault."

Rachel raised one eyebrow and put the hairbrush in my hair, then stepped away from my head. For a moment I had no idea what happened until I realized my head felt heavy and reached back to discover that the hair brush was floating in my tangled hair.

"Okay, fine," I said, rolling my eyes. "My hair, right now, is a rat's nest."

Rachel smiled. "Oh, and I just found a twig. Were you running around after a hellhound again?"

I blushed. "Erm…Sure."

Rachel's jaw dropped and she spun me around in the chair to face her. "Were you making out with Percy behind the weapons shed again?"

"Of course not!" I exclaimed, my voice soaring about twelve octaves. "I resent the implication."

"The implication that you're in a happy relationship?" Rachel asked.

"Yes – no. Wait, what? Just…Don't tell Chiron that we skipped sparring today and pretend we never had this conversation."

Rachel smiled brightly as she spun me back. "So since that ever happened, now it is time for me to remove any further shrubbery –"

"–it was a twig, not shrubbery –"

"– and make your hair all cute and pretty."

"You mean girly and pansy like."

"To-may-toh, to-mah-toh."

For the next few moments, Rachel swore a little bit as she tried to get the hairbrush unstuck from my hair as I reached back and smacked her each time it really pulled.

"I'm sorry!" she said after one particularly hard tug that had me flinching. "It's just…Your hair got really caught and…Yeah…." She had an apologetic look on her face as she leaned over my shoulder. "You have lost a clump of hair." She dropped it into my hand and I fought the impulse to refuse to let her near me for the rest of my life as I decided that French braiding would probably be something to talk to my stepmother about. Perhaps then we'd be able to talk to each other more.

After a while, she sighed in a satisfied manner and grabbed my hand and dragged me in front of the mirror. "No more tangles!" she announced. I actually noticed something different.

My hair was huge.

"Rachel," I said calmly. "My hair has never looked this poofy in my life."

She shrugged. "It's just because the curls are all separated. It'll look fine once I start to braid it. Here, sit down and I'll give you a hand mirror. That way you can see what's going on."

She put the small mirror in my hand and turned my head to the side so I could see what she was doing. "You have to take three pieces of hair from the start, and braid them down, adding a little bit of hair each time you braid. It's not too hard at all."

Rachel's hands moved rapidly, moving the braid down the side of my head into a pigtail faster than I'd seen anyone braid hair in my life. "See?" she said, tying it with an elastic at the bottom of the braid. "Not hard at all."

"Rachel, you just did that in about thirteen seconds without even stopping for me to ask for a little bit of clarification."

"So? It's easy. Here, let me show you again." No slower than the first time, Rachel twisted the other half of my hair into another perfect pigtail, curling the ends with her finger so they looked nice instead of puffy.

"Super easy," she said, admiring her handiwork. "You look so cute!"

"It is not even sort of easy. You're just saying that because you already know how to do it." I turned a little bit again, running my hands over the smooth braids. "It is pretty, though."

Rachel grinned. "Isn't it? That is why you should learn how to do it. You could totally pull it off, the whole always wearing a braid thing. It's good for running around and doing physical activity and monster killing. You know. The usual stuff."

I laughed. "Oh, yes, monster slaughter. The usual activity for a sixteen year old girl. Besides, it's not like I'm going to be able to do this in a quick moment pre-battle."

"Sure you can!"

"Fine," I said, preparing to call her bluff, "Let me try on your hair first if it's so easy to do."

Rachel's face fell. "Oh, well, um, you should probably wait a little bit to experiment on someone else's hair. Learn how to do it on yourself first. You'll feel more…Um…Comfortable."

"Oh so now that it's your hair that would be massacred I'm not allowed?"

Rachel nodded. "Correct."

"Do you have some sort of doll?"

She looked around the room, her eyes finally landing on a doll, splattered with paint and covered in something that looked suspiciously like mustard. "Here!" she said, dropping the doll in my lap. "I'll teach you this way."

She showed me the technique on the doll, which made it a lot easier to understand the braiding since it wasn't on my own scalp, and I decided I would be able to try on my own.

"I think I can handle doll hair," I responded to Rachel after she seemed a little bit hesitant. "Come on, it'll be fine! I think I've got it now."

The next ten minutes were spent unraveling the massive knot I created.

"You realize," began Rachel, examining something that resembled a hairball in the dead center of the doll's head, "my grandmother made this doll for me when I was seven."

"I'm sorry!" I exclaimed. "I didn't realize I was messing up so badly until I looked back up at the top and realized I wrapped one piece of hair around it four or five times and then tried to unravel it."

"I have never seen a braid get so twisted." Rachel's tone was almost awe and disgust, wrapped in one slightly condescending package. "I have also never seen you have this much difficulty with something that wasn't being incapable of understanding that Twilight was actually published."

"There were clear grammatical and continuity errors in nearly every chapter. I will not apologize for my strongly worded letter to the publisher."

Rachel snorted. "Either way, I'm beginning to think you might want to stick with regular braids."

"But it looks nice!" I retorted. "And I want to be able to do something decent with my hair."

"You consider that," said Rachel, gesturing to the beehive on the back of her doll's head, "to be something decent that looks nice?"

I went to defend my failed attempt at doing hair, but found I had no retort that wasn't, "you're face isn't something decent that looks nice," so I decided to keep my mouth shut.

"How about we try to get you into romance novels instead?" said Rachel, smiling apologetically.

I sighed. "As long as they have proper grammar and they don't make me want to throw them at the wall, I guess I can do."

"You mean throw them against the wall like you did at the end of Mockingjay because your heart was broken, then thrown into a cheese grater, or because you hated the book?"

"Hated the book," I replied. "I am always okay with a book ripping my heart out. Bad grammar, however, I cannot tolerate. You know that."

Rachel pursed her lips. "In that case we might not want to do the romance novels. They're…Well, they often aren't the best written things."

I sighed and stood up from her chair, dramatically walking over to her bed and throwing myself face down on it. "Oh, woe is me, I guess I will never be able to be a delicate flower."

"Trust me," Rachel laughed as she sat next to me on the bed, "if you ever became anything like a delicate, prissy, flowery girl, Percy would be worried and sending you to the hospital in moments."

I laughed so hard I inhaled some of her duvet and coughed. "I suppose I'll have to keep do with those flower hair clips that you got me for Christmas. Those count as feminine, right?"

Rachel's left eyebrow went up. "No, actually," she replied, deadpan, "I always considered them to have a rugged masculinity to them."

I chucked a pillow at her head. "Oh, shut your face."


End file.
